A Walk on the Beach
by Lythya
Summary: Sokka tried to make Mai smile.


A walk on the beach

He pulled back his elbows and placed his fingers hard into his cheeks, rolling wildly with his eyes and sticking his tongue out with a ridiculous sound.

"Real mature, Sokka," Mai commented dryly. Her face remained deadpan, except her eyebrow, which had raised in question of whether Sokka belonged in a room locked away from everyone within a five miles radius.

He made a sort of huge sigh, before his shoulder slopped into the right places, and his arms fell to into a cross in front of his chest. He glared at her.

"Some day, Mai! Some day!"

She rolled her eyes and started walking again. She looked out over the sea, at the sun, which was setting, leaving a dreadful color behind.

"Orange," she grunted. "Such an awful color."

Sokka turned towards the sea, watching the sun slowly disappear.

"I thought you Fire Nation people loved colors like orange," he noted.

"Are you kidding?" she asked, shocked. A shudder shook her body, and she held her forearms with her hands. "It's a bad combination between red and yellow. Yellow is annoying, too, but it's at least bearable."

He smacked his hand in his forehead. "Is there anything you don't hate?"

She glared at him.

"Didn't I just call yellow _bearable_? That's a stretch to me, you know!"

"Exactly! Do you care about anything?!" He spread his arms to gesture towards the world. "_Anything_?

She looked away. "I care plenty."

They continued walking in silence. Sokka was looking at the ground, but his eyes kept slipping, moving towards her feet that were leaving these elegant prints in the sand, this balanced way of walking …

"What?"

He hadn't noticed that his eyes had slipped upwards …

"Nothing!"

He blushed and looked away, quickly enough to not see the slight blush coloring her cheeks.

"I think we should go back now," she said, starting to turn around.

"Afraid of the dark?" he teased.

"I'm tired," she cut him off, already walking away.

An idea shot through him, and a grin spread across his face. He tiptoed up behind her and made ready to make the sneakiest of sneak attacks, when she turned around in a rush, and before he knew it, he was in the sand, knives cutting through around him, just barely not touching his skin.

"Sokka!" she sighed. "How many have I told you not to –"

"Yea, yea," he grumbled, trying to sit up. He found out that, even in sand, Mai's knives stood their ground.

She moved towards him with swift steps, removing the knives without a word.

"Man," he said in his shrill voice, "how many do you have of those?"

"Enough," she responded darkly.

"You know," he suggested, taking the hand she'd offered him, "you should smile more."

"I've heard that before," she responded simply.

"Then why don't you?"

She looked into his sparkly eyes and narrowed her own.

"Because I don't have to!" she finally snapped, turning her back to him once more.

He dusted sand off his clothes and hurried to follow her. He would honestly never figure out Mai. She was so strange, so gloomy, so … sighy. She didn't seem to like anything, and actually declared hate towards pretty much anything. Then why was he here, with her? He wasn't supposed to have any good memories of her. Before the war ended, they'd been enemies, and now they were officially friends, sort of, but he still didn't have any happy memories. Not even the memory of her saving him and his friends at The Boiling Rock.

But if he didn't have any good memories of her, why did he bother walking this close to her, on a beach covered in a dark, orange glow, soon to be followed by nightfall and the silvery light of the stars.

"Mai," he said in a serious tone.

"Yes, Sokka?"

"If I could hold a star, would you be impressed?"

She raised an eyebrow and stared insultingly at him.

"Excuse me?"

"Just answer."

"How would you hold a star?" she asked.

He grabbed her around the shoulders and turned her a bit to her left. She stared at him in confusion.

"Stay here!" he told her. Then he began running off, towards some cliffs, holding the right picture in mind.

"Don't leave me!" she whined in a too girly tone. "The darkness might eat me!"

He snickered and rolled his eyes. She was so crazy.

He hesitated at the foot of the cliffs, shaking his head, peeking at her from the corner of his eye. They hadn't spend _that_ much time together since the end of the war, but he could already classify her in such a strange category? He had to stop being in such a rush.

"I'm waiting!" she shouted.

Continuing up the cliffs, he looked at the sky, holding up his hand towards the sky. That should be about right.

"Look, Mai! I'm holding a star!" He burst out into laughter.

He didn't hear a sound, but he suddenly found himself pinned to a stone by one of her spectacularly thrown knives, and before he knew of it, she was standing above him, a few more knives ready. He couldn't really count them in the dark.

"You let me stand there and _freeze_ for that? Peasant!" she accused dryly. She, once again, removed her knives, and then she began finding a way off the cliffs.

"You don't have to get so offended!" he murmured, yet another idea coming to his mind.

His feet found their own way down beside her, where he lay his arm around her shoulders, holding her into his body.

She stiffened in surprise, and he felt her gaze on his face.

"What are you trying to pull?" she asked.

"I'm not trying to pull anything," he responded innocently.

"I have over sixty knives hidden all over my body, so don't lie to me!"

"I have a boomerang, you know! And a knife! A big one!" he told her.

"What do you want?" Right to the point. As always.

"You said you were cold."

She tried to shrug herself out from under his arm, but he kept a firm grasp around her shoulders.

"Well, now I'm moving. There's no need for anybody else to help me with my body temperature."

He raised his brows, looking down at her. She looked exceptionally beautiful in the light of the stars and the moon. She was wearing a shawl over a simple top, her stomach bare, and a skirt wrapped around her hips. It was very simply, but also very, very pretty.

He held up a finger as if he was some sort of teacher. "You shouldn't snap so much at people! Try with a smile. Like …" He put two fingers in either side of her mouth and widening it. Her eyes glared so hard at him that he kept in mind to look out for teeth. "This!"

"Sokka," she said, her voice mumbling because of his hands. "Remove your fingers, or I'm going to shoot you full of knives within five seconds."

He grinned apologetically and quickly removed his hand, pulling a bit back from her, yet not fully redrawing his arm from her shoulders.

He frowned. "I only have one measure left!" he declared.

"And what is that?" she asked, a sigh of relief escaping her lips.

"I'll have to dress you up like Ty Lee and hope that her pink aura will cure you!"

He looked off into the empty air in front of him, imagining Mai as Ty Lee.

He was just about to break into laughter, when he heard an enchanting sound.

It was rough and whispery, very low and reminded him a bit of sand. But it was also to his ears like sugar was to his mouth.

Turning his head towards her, he discovered a Mai fighting very much to keep chuckles from escaping. She held a hand up in front of her mouth, obviously not clear about whether she was supposed to glare about the outburst, or just give in to the laughter.

He smirked.

"And I would braid your hair and put makeup on you so that your cheeks would look all rosy!" he continued, pointing to her cheek. "And everybody would ask: Ty Lee! Who died?" He gestured towards himself, making an obvious down-pointing mouth, his eyes glaring, and his forehead gathering.

She bashed his shoulder, giggles coming out in gasps as she tried not to. "I … do not … look like that!"

She seemed to get a grip of herself then, and she composed herself. But she had laughed. She could see it in his eyes. That grin that told her he got exactly what he wanted.

His eyes moved closer, and she realized that his face was very close. She moved backwards as much as his arm around her shoulders allowed.

"What?" she asked, her min shaky, but her appearance perfect.

"When did you last look in a mirror?" he asked.

"Ha, ha, very funny." She rolled her eyes. "Can't you come up with something better?"

He let go of her shoulders and bowed down to pick up two big, black and flat stones, which he held up on his head innocently, simply saying: "Panda."

She stared at him with resignedly eyes, before she said: "And I guess you said something like 'tentacles' to your sister and did like this." She held up her hands to the upper part of her ear, and then she moved her fingers in a tentacle way.

"No," he declared. "I said 'the moon spirit be with me' and got the hell out of there."

A wry smile crossed her lips for an instant, and he pointed towards her. "See! You think that's funny!"

She crossed her arms and looked away with her nose in the sky. "I do not! Why would I find something so ridiculous funny?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. You tell me." He smiled and continued: "Did you know Aang can make girly necklaces?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Somehow, that doesn't surprise me."

They laughed together.

"Now that Ty Lee has become a Kyoshi warrior, her clothes are all free of an owner! Why don't you borrow them? We can paint them black."

"As appealing as that sounds," she cleared her throat, "no thanks."

"We could go to the South Pole, and you could get a _Water Tribe Jacket_!" He sounded very excited.

"I'll be sick that day," she declared.

He frowned at her and shook his head. "You suffer from the so-called decease called 'nocapablesmily'. It's very deadly!"

"Deadly?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

He shrugged. "Okay, so it's bad for your health!"

"I hear it's also very contagious! So you better run off now, back to your friends who suffer from 'Smile-at-anything-and-anyone'."

He rolled his eyes. "You know, I already caught that one, and I hear that _that_ is even more contagious than what you suffer from. So you're the one who should be looking out for illness."

"Is that so," she snorted, crossing her arms.

"Yes. In fact," he continued, stepping closer with a smirk, "I think you're in danger of it right now"

She raised an eyebrow.

The attack was inescapable. The illness caught her before she could do anything. It's hands ran over her stomach in tickly circles, making strange giggles escape from her throat.

"Stop it!" she cried. "Stop it!"

"Never!" the illness declared.

She tried to kick him off, but he had her pinned under him in a way that made her incapable of reaching her knives or any part of him so that she could shove him off. She could only wriggle and try and escape that way.

She didn't realize that the giggles were getting heavier and warmer, and that his hands didn't move around as much anymore.

She opened her eyes as she tried to muffle the laughing, and she looked straight into his sparkly, blue eyes. He smiled solemnly at her, but also sort of sadly.

The laughing finally let go of her, but they stayed in the same position, her pinned under him, and they just kept smiling at each other.

He leaned closer to her. "You're beautiful," he breathed, and she could smell his scent in her nose. It was so fragrant that she could almost taste it. It swirled her mind in a strange way, that she had only experienced once before.

"You're funny," she mumbled.

His expression turned perplexed, and her chest moved as she tried, once again, to hold back spasms of laughter. She wasn't sure if she had ever laughed so much, if her heart had ever yearned so dearly for the sensation of it.

He smiled and leaned closer to her. His hands didn't hold her down quite as hard anymore, and she moved her arms out from under them and placed them on his neck. She pulled him closer, and before she could clearly comprehend what was happened, what had just gone by, their lips had met in the sweetest of unions.

He tasted better than she would have guessed, more full than his smell had promised.

He moved his hands around her waist and leaned closer deepening the kiss. Mai had never felt so confused. It was like her body was moving on its own, not entirely detached from her will, but still not in contact with the part of her that was mulling all this over.

She wasn't sure when it happened, but her leg had somehow twined itself around him, and his hands were dangerously close to her breasts.

Her breathing sped up, and so did his. She wasn't sure whether this was a good idea, but it _felt_ good, and it was definitely one of the nicest things she had ever felt, and the pressure of his body against hers was rendering her breathless and gasping for air in the sweetest of ways.

She decided that the situation was getting out of hand, and she tried calling to him, but all her mouth formed were moans that pronounced his name.

His lips left hers for an instant, and she knew that his was it. No matter the consequences, she had to do it.

She turned her head to the side, and she felt his lips attaching themselves to her cheek.

It took him only a matter of seconds to realize that no, her chin was _not_ her lips, and he pulled back, his eyes rolling a bit.

"Mai?" he asked, confused. A blush colored his head, from neck to the top.

"Sorry, Sokka," she murmured, trying to move out under him. He didn't resist, simply removed himself. He looked hurt, and she hated to see him that way, but she had to. This was wrong.

She started to correct her hair and clothes, but then she felt his hand on her shoulder, and a cringe ran through her body, while an annoying part of her was dancing in joy.

"Mai …" His lips were too close to her neck.

She stepped away from him. "Don't touch me," she murmured. She glanced at him. He was obviously bewildered.

"What's wrong, Mai?" he asked.

"_This_ is wrong," she responded.

He tried placing his hand on her shoulder again, but she turned angrily around and stepped backwards.

"What didn't you get of what I _just_ said?" she snapped.

"I like you, Mai! And I know you like me, too –"

"Don't be self-centered," she cut him off.

"You kissed me back," he pointed out, a little smile forming on his lips.

She looked away, crossing her arms.

"Let's go back," she murmured, and she began walking.

He hurried up on her side, grabbed her shoulders and forced a kiss on her lips before she knew it.

When he pulled back, he was widely grinning. "See! You didn't pin me to the sand or anything!"

She scowled at him. "That would be a waste on you, wouldn't it?"

He nodded. "It sure would." His arm wrapped itself around her shoulders, and he smiled at her. She sighed, and after a few seconds, she gave a little smile back.

They walked back towards the beach house.

She didn't remove his arm.

-

Omg, I LOVE Maikka! I absolutely love the thought of them :D And this little oneshot shows EXACTLY what idea of it I like the MOST: Sokka trying to make Mai smile. That's just so sweet!

Oooh, the last part was so *squeeee* cute :3

Please review :D


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